Nucleic acid testing (NAT) is an essential part of the rapidly growing field of molecular diagnostics (MDx). It allows for patient specific diagnostics on the genome level as well as for perfect identification of pathogens, e.g. discrimination between different virus strains.
The current gold standard for nucleic acid testing of viruses and other organisms is real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) followed by sequencing. RT-PCR requires highly skilled operators, expensive reagents and tightly controlled reaction environments. This is largely due to the need for amplification of viral nucleic acids to generate large enough signals for readout. These limitations suggest a critical need for a new type of diagnostic instrument for amplification-free viral detection that is rapid, sensitive, reliable, and quantitative.